The present invention relates to a thermochemical method for producing hydrogen from water.
Recently, the shortage of petroleum resources has become a serious problem and, in the field of hydrogen manufacturing industry, in which hereinbefore petroleum has been mainly used as a source of hydrogen, the movement of changing the source from petroleum to water has appeared. As one of the methods for producing hydrogen, there has been an electrolysis of water from of oil. However, since electric power itself is being obtained mainly from petroleum, the electrolysis method may become a problem as well as the case of using directly hydrocarbons as the source of hydrogen when petroleum is dried up. Therefore, a method of using water as a raw material without electric power has been required and, hereinbefore, there have been some proposals. However, a completely closed system in which hydrogen and oxygen are obtained from water and other by-products are not discharged out of the system has not been sufficiently established. It is very important to keep heat energy used in the closed system down as a whole by utilizing thermochemical energy. The known methods have to be improved in this regard. In this field, those skilled in the art have made efforts to establish a closed system with a lowered heat energy consumption.
From such a viewpoint, the present invention aims at establishment of a closed system in which water is used as a raw material but an electrolysis method is not utilized and heat energy consumption is very low.